Flood water surrounds a damaged road sign as it covers a road at the northern end of Ullswater, near Pooley Bridge.
Photograph: Paul Ellis/AFP/Getty Images

One person has been found dead and 45,000 properties are without electricity following the flooding that has hit north-west England.

Police said that a body had been found in the water in the river Kent near Kendal after Storm Desmond hit Cumbria. The environment minister, Liz Truss, told MPs that there had been a number of fatalities.

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There were reports that a man in his 70s was pulled from a stream close to the river Kent in Staveley. ITV Border said that the man, who died near Kendal, had been trying to retrieve a barrel from the water to prevent flooding further downstream in the village, where 1,376 properties were flooded.

His body was recovered at about 10am on Monday morning by emergency services personnel in Cumbria, who had spent much of Sunday searching for him.

It was the first death following the flooding and the second connected to the storm. In London, a 90-year-old man was believed to have been blown into the side of a moving bus by a gust of wind, near Finchley Central tube station on Saturday.

About 42,000 households in Lancaster, Morecambe and Carnforth in north Lancashire found themselves again with no power on Monday evening, a failure that came hours after Electricity North West said it had restored power in the region. The firm said the power cut was caused by “unforseen damage”.

In Lancaster, 19,000 households were still being supplied by generators that were mobilised overnight. Electricity North West said it was calling for extra generators and engineers from across the country to help restore power.

In Cumbria, 2,657 properties were still without power as night fell, with floodwater restricting access for Electricity North West teams.

Cumbria police estimated that a total of 4,881 homes were flooded across the county, saying that in the “reasonable worst-case scenario” there could be a total of 6,455 homes affected. Thousands of people remained homeless.

David Cameron visited Carlisle, where police estimated between 2,200 and 3,500 homes had been flooded.

Touring one victim’s home, the prime minister promised to look again at the government’s response and said the Environment Agency would assess its response to see what lessons could be learned.

“After every flood, the thing to do is sit down, look at the money you are spending, look at what you are building, look at what you are planning to build in the future and ask: ‘Is it enough?’” Cameron said while visiting the flooded Warwick Road home of mother-of-three Lesa Boyko

Following a huge clean-up effort, just eight schools in Cumbria were set to remain closed for a further day on Tuesday. Train services were restored north of Preston, but major disruption continued in northern England, with services operated by the Caledonian Sleeper, TransPennine Express, Northern Rail and Virgin affected.

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The Met Office said new rainfall records were set in the Lake District for a 24-hour period, with 341.4mm recorded on Honister Pass in the 24-hours to 6pm on Saturday. That passed the previous record during flooding on 19 November 2009, when 316.4mm was measured at Seathwaite.

Giving a statement to MPs in the House of Commons on Monday, Truss said temporary defences and pumps were moved to north-west England, with 200 military personnel mobilised and a Chinook helicopter made available as part of the emergency response on Saturday.

A man makes his way through flood water in Carlisle. Photograph: Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images

On Monday night, Cumbria council said it had major concern about the county’s bridges, three of which – Pooley Bridge at the northern end of Ullswater, the B5295 bridge at Braithwaite and Keswick Railway Path Bridge – had collapsed. Inspectors were trying to assess 130 other bridges in need of immediate inspection, the council said.

Military personnel were providing support to the communities in Patterdale and Glenridding, on the southern shores of Ullswater, which had been cut off as a result of the damage, the council said.

Numerous other roads remain closed across the county and a full status update can be found on www.cumbria.gov.uk.

A spokesperson for Cumbria county council said: “This level of damage is unprecedented and we have had staff working flat out to assess the scale of what’s happened and begin to put plans in place. It’s still dangerous out on the road network and we’re urging people to stay away from closed bridges and damaged roads. It’s possible there could be further subsidence or collapse.”

Keswick’s mayor, Paul Titley, suggested that more could have been done to prevent flooding in his town. He claimed that the high water levels in nearby Thirlmere reservoir, which acts as a catchment for water coming off the surrounding hills, may have made flooding in Keswick more likely.

Flood debris is moved off the road in Keswick. Photograph: Paul Ellis/AFP/Getty Images

“When Lake Thirlmere is empty, we’re pretty much safe here because Thirlmere acts as a catchment for all the water coming off the fells. This time it was full. It was also full in 2009,” he said, referring to the last floods to devastate Cumbria. “United Utilities [who manage water levels in the lake] are paid to keep it full so the good people of Manchester can have a bath. We’d rather it had a lot more space left in it in the winter so we don’t face the risk of the water spilling over, which is what happened at the weekend.”

In response, a spokesman from United Utilities said: “Thirlmere reservoir is well maintained and managed, according to all the proper legislation and in accordance with the local arrangements agreed with Keswick Flood Action Group. If the volume of water coming into the reservoir exceeds what can be released, the reservoir will fill up. November saw more than twice the normal level of rainfall and on 5 December alone, around 14,000 million litres of water entered the reservoir, more than a third of its capacity.”

This article was amended on 8 December 2015. It originally stated two bridges had collapsed in Cumbria. A third, the B5295 bridge at Braithwaite, had also been destroyed. This has been corrected.